32 Beers, 32 Cities

Like the Cardinals, SanTan is trying to change the conversation (in craft
beer, not the NFC West). Matching the character of the Southwest with
bright, assertive cans that jump off the shelves, SanTan is a
forward-looking brewery for a fan base that finally has some hope for the
future in the form of QB Kevin Kolb. If it’s in season, try the
Anchorman-inspired Sex Panther chocolate barleywine, or the acclaimed
Devil’s Pale Ale if you’re of tamer tastes.

Terrapin may not be as iconic as the Dirty Bird, but the signature turtle
of the Athens brewery is nationally synonymous with good beer and
Southern charm. And boy, do you have options: It’s hard to think of a
craft brewery that puts out more beers, from one-offs and collaborations
to a wide range of seasonals and flagships, all of which go down as
smooth as Matt Ryan’s fluid delivery. Start with the Rye Pale or the
Hopsecutioner IPA and work your way up to the Big Hoppy Monster.

The Ravens play hard-nosed football—would you want to face off against Ray Lewis and Terrell Suggs?—but have the offense to balance out their overall game, thanks to quarterback Joe Flacco and company. It’s hard to coax strength like that into coexistence, but then again, that’s how the best brews are made. Witness the monstrously hoppy, but magnificently balanced, Dogfish Head 120 minute IPA, “continuously hopped” for 120 minutes and then dry-hopped for an entire month during fermentation. Still not happy (or hoppy) enough? Fine. Dogfish maestro Sam Calaigone tosses in some whole leaf hops for good measure (that’s called wet-hopping) for a final bitterness level of 120 IBUs and 15-20 percent ABV. Thing is? The stuff’s deceptively smooth, kind of like a linebacker slipping around your blind side... and WHAM. One or two of these and you’ll know exactly what it feels like to be on the receiving end of a Ray Lewis piledriver.

While Genessee, Dundee, and the other products of Rochester's North American Brewers may have the guts of many Bills fans, Flying Bison embodies the city's lake-effect soul. On its website, the brewery quotes former Buffalo mayor Jimmy Griffin on the Blizzard of ’85: “Go home, grab a six-pack, and wait it out.” And anyone who subscribes to snowstorm imbibing is probably the same guy who’s willing to go to a game in 20-below weather clad in nothing but red and blue paint, only to be disappointed by an underachieving roster of also-rans. Try the ultra-drinkable Buffalo Lager or Aviator Red for your next tailgate.

Drawing from sources as diverse as Norse warriors and blaxploitation
films for its beers, Winston-Salem's Foothills Brewing is emblematic of
the area between the coast and Appalachia that defines the heart of
Carolina and the Panthers' fan base. The Sexual Chocolate Stout is a
widely sought-after blend of delicious, robust flavors—something that can
also be said of an underrated offense with Cam Newton at the
helm.

Some would say Matt Forte has taken the mantle from all-time great running back Walter Payton. But in the brewing world, it’s Two Brothers brewing, run by Jim and Jason Ebel, who snapped up Payton’s brew pub just outside of Chicago as its second facility, a curious, circular-shaped structure once used to turn train engines around on the track. The brothers’ first spot isn’t far from the Argonne National Laboratory, home to a particle accelerator and a legion of physicists who patronize the lunch and dinner rush there—so the brew has to be top-notch. For now, savor the Cain and Ebel Rye IPA, creamy thanks to a touch of palm sugar and with a kick from the rye and hops.

While Ohio has its fair share of great beer, decent craft breweries used to be as sparse in Cincy as Bengals playoff victories. Enter Mt. Carmel Brewing in 2005, which arose in the basement of a 1920s farmhouse on the outskirts of the city. Mt. Carmel’s beer is "brewed with [a] pleasant touch of fanaticism," something to which long-suffering Bengals fans can relate. Just as Andy Dalton and company have given their team a fighting chance in the tough AFC North, Mt. Carmel seems to be a playbook for how to make good beer work in Southwestern Ohio. (Want proof? Try the intimidating IPA at 7% ABV.)

Go ahead and find a craft brewery that’s better linked with its city than
Great Lakes is with Cleveland. All of the brewery’s labels, from Burning
River to Lake Erie Monster, pay homage to some facet of Cleveland's
history or geography. (Though fans will have to wait for a case of Colt
McCoy Stout until the Browns bring home that elusive world championship.)
Meanwhile, the Edmund Fitzgerald is one of the better porters you’ll try,
carrying an appropriately dark and stormy thickness for a sports town
that hasn’t seen many bright days.

Texas' craft beer scene is dominated by little guys in places like Austin
and San Antonio, but America's Team is best represented by the national
beer of Texas, Shiner, which is as ubiquitous throughout the state as
Romo jerseys. The flagship Shiner Bock, with its distinctive yellow label
and horned goat, signifies dark, malty goodness as bold as a Jerry Jones
personnel decision.

The mile-high winning traditions of John Elway are matched by Boulder's
nationally beloved craft brewery. Flexing their brewing muscles with
everything from IPAs and dark ales to barrel-aged sours, the multifaceted
brewery has as many weapons as the back-to-back championship teams of the
late 1990s. And Avery retains thematic ties to today's team, with their
numerous spiritual references in beer names (Karma, Reverend, Salvation)
befitting a team led by outspoken born-again Tim Tebow. The other side of
the aisle is represented as well with the heavy-hitting “Demons Series,”
including the dark Mephistopheles and the rich and flavorful oak-aged
Samael’s.

Located in a 1919 warehouse in the historic district of Detroit, Atwater
Beer honors the industrial history of the Motor City with traditional
German styles of beer that come in creative, lively packaging. Just like
bitter yet hopeful Lions fans, Atwater can celebrate a too-long-gone past
while looking to a promising future. Try the Detroit Pale Ale or the
silver medal-winning Purple Gang Pilsner, both available in cans
now.

No beer embodies the small-town, high-quality ethic of the nation's only
fan-owned team more than the tiny and heralded New Glarus Brewery. Deb
and Daniel Carey bring home medals more often than the Packers do
rings—and that’s saying something—but unlike the nationally televised
Green and Gold, New Glarus is scarcely found outside of Wisconsin. Every
bottle of the popular Wisconsin Belgian Red is brewed with Wisconsin
wheat and over a pound of local cherries from nearby Door County.

Texas's newest football team (born 2002) goes best with its oldest craft
brewery (1994). Saint Arnold is named after a man who championed the
rights of individuals rather than established hierarchies, and whose
spirit provided pilgrims with beer when they prayed to him. No word yet
on if that works at modern tailgates—but here’s hoping. The Lawnmower
Kolsch is a great beer with which to watch Andre Johnson haul in passes,
at a crisp and complex 4.9% ABV.

Dark Lord Day is the yearly brew-bacchanal thrown by Munster, Indiana-based Three Floyds brewery, an unruly band of beersmiths considered by many to be the most formidable in the United States. Kind of like the Colts—when Peyton’s healthy, anyway. The annual celebration brings thousands of devotees to a nondescript industrial park to try their luck at a lottery to buy a bomber or two of the flagship imperial stout, Dark Lord. It’s velvety smooth (again, Peyton), comes on strong at the end (same), and packs a kick thanks to the Intelligentsia coffee in the mix, almost like the Colts' long-range field goal specialist Adam Vinateri. But unlike the Colts, there’s no way you can throw your season to improve your chances of winning the top pick in the Dark Lord draft.

Right or wrong, the Jaguars organization has never been afraid of bold decisions—just ask Byron Leftwich and David Garrard, two franchise quarterbacks cut suddenly when management wanted a change. So Bold City Brewery, with its compelling woodcut-style art and its aquatic theme, is a logical choice for Jags fans to rally behind. Many of the flagship beers are even cast in colors similar to the teal, gold and black of the Jaguars. Try Fritz’s Hefeweizen for a sterling example of a German wheat beer, or the Bold English Old Ale if you’re looking for deeper flavor.

If packing Arrowhead Stadium to watch the likes of backup Tyler Palko sling the pigskin is any indication, Chiefs fans are nothing if not loyal. And it’s their unbounded hometown pride that helped Boulevard become the biggest craft brewery in the Midwest (and the 10th biggest in America). Boulevard’s tanks are filled largely with full-bodied versions of familiar ales—a pale, an amber, a stout, and so on—but it’s the citrus-washed Unfiltered Wheat for which the brewery is most famous.

Football in Miami has provoked a strange marriage, uniting retirees from other states and local Floridians with an immigrant population that spans much of the Western Hemisphere. Yet with the right ingredients (like Don Shula, Dan Marino or Mercury Morris), excellence—and even perfection—has been possible in South Florida. Similarly, Brewzzi is an unexpected union: An Italian American Bistro and brewery microchain with a brewmaster renowned for German styles, it boasts year-round beach-friendly beers that range from the fruity Tropical Madness to the malty Boca Festbier.

If you made four Super Bowl appearances and never walked away with a ring, you’d be surly too. Flagship beers from the suburban Minneapolis brewery include the sessionable Bender brown ale and massively hoppy Furious IPA, which make tasty liquid consolations for cold, bitter Viking fans. Of course, for the more disenchanted, there’s also Surly’s Belgian saison-inspired CynicAle.

Tom Brady’s a natural, whether he’s tossing the pigskin or making babies with a certain Brazilian supermodel. Hell, you can’t bottle lightening. But there’s another born winner in New England that you can: the innovative Belgian beers offered by Portland, Maine-based Allagash Brewing. Launched in 1995 by founder Rob Tod to tap into Belgian techniques and styles, Allagash has landed a series of crowns at the Great American Beer Festival and World Beer Cup to rival Brady’s trio of Super Bowl wins. Try the White (based on the Belgian Wit beer) and then branch out into some of the barrel-aged delicacies. They’re championship caliber. Maybe Gisele’s even had a quaff.

While Abita is the big name in the area, the Irish Channel's New Orleans
Lager and Ale (NOLA) Brewing Company is the new kid on the block, making
noise with its big colorful labels and bright flavorful beers. Just as
the high-flying Saints offense is the face of the new pass-happy NFL,
NOLA is emblematic of the new Gulf Coast brewing scene. If your tailgate
includes barbeque, a Smoky Mary will pair well at 5.3% ABV, while the
creamy Flambeau Red can hang with Nawlins crawfish any night of the
week.

Brooklyn brewmaster Garrett Oliver plies his trade on the opposite side of Manhattan from the Giants’ actual homeland (the Meadowlands, in New Jersey) but Giants fans and hearty beers aplenty can be found on weekend nights at the confines in Williamsburg, all available for the low cost of a wooden token (five for a picture of Andrew Jackson, available at the front desk). What’s more, Oliver’s more experimental brews—from the face-melting Brooklyn Blast to the bottle-fermented variants Brooklyn Local 1, Local 2, and Sorachi Ace—are a treat when you find yourself in a championship mood, as Eli and company have in recent years. Savor the suds. And Jersey, you make good beer, too, but it’s all in the name.

If there was ever a brewery with a personality that can match Jets coach
Rex Ryan’s, it's the circus freak-centric line of strange lagers from
Shmaltz Brewing in Brooklyn. For starters, artist Matt Polacheck crafts
carnie folk caricatures on labels like the Albino Python White Lager and
the Human Blockhead. But there’s more: Coney Island actually operates a
freak show, where Shmaltz has set up “the world’s smallest brewery”
featuring a dwarf brewing beer one gallon at a time. (And you thought
Rex's foot fetish videos were out of line!)

Linden St. glorifies the struggle of bringing a tradition of excellence
back to the East Bay in only the way that an Oakland product can: by
playing dirty. (It’s the Al Davis way, after all.) The brewery describes
its California Common Lager by taking a not-so-veiled shot at nearby
rival Anchor for trademarking the name "Steam." Sounds like a beer for
Raiders fans, alright. And just as the Silver and Black always seem to
have an outside shot at the playoffs, Linden St. refers to its Burning
Oak Black Lager, a Shwarzbier with sneaky hints of smoke, as its “dark
horse” beer.

Steeped in the colonial history of the City of Brotherly Love, Yards
produces beers named after founding fathers and early pugilists. The
brewery’s Brawler is a session ale with a name that befits a gritty
Eagles team that needed to install a courthouse in its stadium to deal
with unruly fans. It’s chock full of malty flavor that can stand up to a
cheese steak, and at 3.8% ABV, it's designed to be safely drunk in
quantities as high as LeSean McCoy’s touchdown total.

While Penn Brewing and Iron City both call to mind the strong, old-world
history of the steel industry that gave the team its name, East End
Brewing Company goes hand in hand with the modern-era Steelers. Long gone
are the days of “Mean” Joe Greene and the Steel Curtain, and in their
place are Big Ben Roethlisberger and a fearsome Bruce Arians aerial
attack. And no brewery symbolizes the Steelers’ 21st century team—not to
mention the new sustainability-focused city of Pittsburgh—more than East
End, which delivers kegs of its Pedal Pale Ale on bikes and has swept
the area with community-building charity operations and big, tasty beers.
The Big Hop IPA is a must-have for any beer-savvy visitor to the
city.

San Diego County has several championship-caliber breweries, but the
cream of the crop is Green Flash, which bears striking similarities with
a talented Chargers team. There’s the obvious connection of "flash” and
"bolts.” There are the crisp coastline labels that match the feel of
periwinkle and powder blue uniforms. And, charged with hops, the flagship
Green Flash IPA is a world-class beer that always seems like it should
have more national hardware than it does. Sound familiar?

Call it a Gold Rush: Russian River brewmaster Vinnie Cilurzo pioneered the hop-heavy double IPA (DIPA) style in the mid-1990s, and never looked back. His current lineup still hits the hops—try and get your hands on a bottle of Pliny the Elder DIPA, if you can—but has expanded to include a coveted range of sours, barrel-aged beers, and more, achieving a near-dominance of the high-end craft brewing echelon to rival the Niners’ 13-3 regular season. Beer nerds consider landing a case (or even a bottle) of Russian River the equivalent of bringing home the Lombardi trophy.

Seattle is home to more than a few entrepreneurs and iconoclasts (Starbucks? Microsoft? Jimi Hendrix, anyone?) but the brew system at Georgetown Brewing struck us as one-of-a-kind during a recent visit. For starters? None of that bottling business. It’s all growlers here—pre-loaded via a unique three-at-a-time bottling system, and banked in a case, by style, for quick swapping with your empty. It’s a paradigm that shifts what it means to be a brewer, much like what Seahawks coach Pete Carroll is trying to do with his middling 7-9 team. Grand slam 30 cases? None of that here, thanks. Just real beer (Manny’s Pale is the go-to for many of the best beer geeks in town) served in outsized packages.

A mile and a half west of the Edward Jones Dome sits the Schlafly Taproom, Missouri’s oldest operating brewpub and a place where Schlafly rotates through roughly 50 different ales and lagers. The beer is straightforward and honest, free from kitschy names and brewed in traditional styles. That’s exactly what a beer-loving Rams fan needs—a simple respite from a struggling team and a flavorful alternative to that other St. Louis beer, Bud Light.

Ain’t easy brewing beer or playing football in the swamps—for both of
‘em, you’d prefer a nice, mild climate and, well, fewer alligators. But
Cigar City, just like the Bucs, shows good things can happen with the
right amount of elbow grease. The brewery’s wood-aged ales are some of
the most interesting in the country, and the white oak finish given to
its already standout Jai Lai IPA adds smoothing vanilla and dill notes to
balance out the bitterness of the hops. Cigar City is one of a handful of
brewers that offers this kind of brew. Might be the Bucs front office,
currently sans coach and mulling a fifth pick in the draft, should kick
back with a few to hammer out a plan.

The most exciting play in Titans history is the Music City Miracle—and
that name also applies to Yazoo Brew’s serendipitous birth in Nashville a
decade ago. Founder Linus Hall decided he loved making beer more than
tires (he migrated to the Music City to work with Bridgestone), and
almost immediately turned Yazoo into a local establishment. The Hop
Project IPA is a dynamic beer in the vein of Chris Johnson—it always
changes, with a different blend of hops in each new batch.

The new cannery out of the nation's capital has punchy label art that
reflects a frustration with the political system. And if there is
anything that Redskins fans can appreciate, it's frustration at inept,
intransigent, and incompetent leadership. (Paging Dan Snyder…) With the
war cry of “Fermentation Without Representation,” DC Brau makes
earmark-worthy beer at recession-friendly price points. Try their The
Public Pale Ale, a 6% ABV American pale with citrusy hops and a caramel
character from Vienna malts.

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